


Intolerably Cold

by ensorcel



Category: The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Coming of Age, F/F, F/M, Femslash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-20
Updated: 2018-10-20
Packaged: 2019-08-04 23:32:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16356410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ensorcel/pseuds/ensorcel
Summary: Miranda has always been surrounded by women. This is the first time she's noticing.A study of the people revolving around in Miranda Priestly's life, and the weight they hold.





	Intolerably Cold

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: All rights reserved to Twentieth Century Fox and Laura Weisberger. Any characters recognized do not belong to me.
> 
> Many thanks to [zigostia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zigostia/pseuds/zigostia) for saving this story.

The first woman Miranda ever loved was her mother. Her mother was the most beautiful person in the world, she would think, and young little Miriam would be right. She would walk down the streets of downtown, shabby Detroit, and the other women would coo over how alike the two of them looked, and to Miriam, it was the best compliment she could ever been given. She wanted nothing more than to be her mother. Eleanor Princhek, she would think. Oh how elegant it was, a name like Eleanor Princhek.

Her mother would hold her hand as they flipped through those glossy, fancy, fashion magazines they could barely afford, and Miriam would watch as her mother fought to make ends work on her father’s minuscule salary. Her family may have been poor, but her mother was the best dressed in the whole town, and how Miriam wished to be her!

She remembers watching her mother’s beautiful reflection in their shabby mirrors in her parent’s bedroom, her mother gently brushing out Miriam’s soft, short hair. She would watch the long strokes down the hair, as her mother whispered in the ear how to style it in the classiest way possible, whispering that you didn’t need to be rich to be pretty. Miriam believed her. (Who doesn’t believe their mothers at that age?)

Mother would teach her how to delicately run rouge over their lips, blush scattered on the cheeks, and eyeliner painted across eyelids. Miriam would eat it all up, admiring in the marvellousness that was her mother. The way her mother walked, talked, breathed life into the world, somehow made her better than other mothers. Miriam would watch her dazzle guests, smile at just the right people, and bounce her up and down on her knee, calling her “my beautiful little girl” as though she meant it.

Eleanor Princhek may have been the best dressed in town, but Miriam remembers watching her mother silently sob her heart out at the dinner table, her father, sister, and brother quietly finishing their meals, the gasps escaping the beautiful blonde’s mouth.

Five months later, Miriam woke up to a note she can barely read, the scrawny, messy scrambles flying over the page, forcing her to ask her father to read it out for her. He slams it into the fire.

She was four.

* * *

Miriam is now seven, and she has a best friend. Her name is Mary, and they play together after school every day, dressed up in their older sisters’ clothes, pouring each other tea. It’s been three years since her mother left, and the only memory she has of her is bright blonde curls, and smartly dressed clothes. She doesn’t need her mother anyway. She has Mary.

Mary has nicer clothes than her, a nicer house, nicer parents—a mother—and nicer toys. Miriam burns with jealousy, but Mary listens to everything she says, so she’s okay with it. They are very good friends, Miriam knows. Mary wants to be friends with her. It doesn’t matter that Miriam’s father is never home, it doesn’t matter that her mother is gone, and it doesn’t matter that the Princheks are poorer than they’ve ever been before. Mary wants to be friends with her.  

They flip through endless shiny magazines upon magazines in Mary’s brightly painted pastel pink room, Miriam’s eyes eating up the pretty clothes, girls, and sets. She’s heard of New York City, of course, from the snippets of conversations between Mary’s mother and father, and from when her mother was home.

It sounds absolutely lovely.

They play dress up, Miriam donned in lush, rich fabrics from Mary’s mother’s closet, and Mary puffed up in long silks and bright colours.

Miriam burns with jealousy.

“How come you always get to be the Queen?” Mary asks, her childish voice perking up.

“You can be Queen next time,” Miriam replies. She sits up taller on her pillow, fluffing out her dress. (It’s too big and doesn’t quite fit, but she ignores that.) Mary’s dress is prettier, but she ignores that too. Mary eyes her warily.

“Promise?” she asks, looking Miriam directly in the eye.

“Of course,” Miriam says. She has long learned that promises don’t mean anything, and this is just a small one with Mary, so it doesn’t really matter anyways. Mary then giggles, sitting dainty on her pillow. Which is also prettier than Miriam’s. Which she also ignores.

“Let’s begin!” Mary says excitedly.

Miriam picks up the teapot with as much grace as she can muster, and places a British accent on her words.

“Tea, my dear?”

* * *

When Miriam first meets Kathleen Mydoc, the her first thought is  _she’s pretty._ Her hair sweeps down perfectly like a movie starlet, her clothes fitting her just right, and her smile creases in all the right places. She looks like she stepped out of those glossy magazines Miriam spends her time riffing through. Mary had long moved, giving Miriam her new address, telling her to write. Miriam did, but she never got one back. Nevertheless that. Mary was a childhood friend. Those don’t last. She’s fourteen now, and her mother is a distant thought in her past.

She is friends with a whole group of beautiful, popular girls in her grade, and though they are all much prettier than she—Miriam has never been a natural beauty—it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter because Miriam’s going places. She’s going to get out of this hole and into the big city where she’ll have a nice apartment, no nagging siblings, a hot boyfriend, and everything she could possibly want in the world. She’s going to make it out, and that’s what matters in the end.

All the girls in the group are pretty, but Kathleen is the prettiest. Miriam’s looked at enough magazines to know what’s pretty and what’s not. Kathleen’s things aren’t as nice as Mary’s, but Miriam is drawn to her in a way more than she was to Mary.

They waste the days sneaking smokes behind the school, balancing grades, finding boyfriends, and teaching other the skills their mothers taught them. Miriam’s practiced hand paints brilliant rouge over Kathleen’s full lips, wings the lids of her eyes, brings out the red in the cheeks. Kathleen wears a lovely perfume, Miriam notices, the—is it lavender?—wafting through the air. Miriam wishes she looked like Kathleen, with her heart-shaped face and kind eyes.

Miriam’s father has stopped speaking to her, the only conversations held being curfews and report cards. She has long forgotten her mother’s face, the only reminder being a couple of old photos and a reflection in the mirror. She supposes her father’s heart hurts too much to look at his daughter, a constant, constant  _thing_  there, the spoils of his failures.

When she looks at Kathleen’s happy family with a happy mother and father and younger brother, she forgets the fact that Kathleen is prettier, richer, nicer, and almost begs Mrs. Mydoc to let her stay after her second time at their house.

They spin through high school together, becoming the best of friends. Miriam and Kathleen, she thinks. It sounds like a TV show, Miriam strings out on her mouth. They sound lovely together.

But Miriam has long known that good things don’t last, and when Kathleen tells her that she’s moving, she’s not at all surprised. These are childhood friends, Miriam tells herself. (But it doesn’t make it hurt any less.) Hugging Kathleen tightly, she lets the light perfume the beautiful brunette wears (lavender, she remembers) waver over her, the air allowing the scent to wrap around Miriam.

“Promise to write?” Miriam chokes out, hoping her face doesn’t show her heart. Kathleen smiles, the corners of her eyes crinkling.

“Don’t be silly! Of course I will!” Kathleen bursts out, pulling Miriam in for another hug.

She waits by the mailbox everyday for nearly four months. No letter comes.

(The sweater she was wearing that day stays in the back of her closet, unwashed―lingering lavender.)

* * *

At seventeen she sleeps with the wrong man, gets knocked up, and scrambles together three hundred dollars, and the next thing she knows, she’s on a bus to the wondrous city of New York, no university degree, twenty bucks, and the clothes on her back. Nine hours later she steps foot into the Big Apple, and for her first night in New York, she sleeps on the streets. (It is not her last.)

Throwing together whatever she can into a resume, she flies it off to company after company, all fashion magazines, all publishing, all businesses. She told herself she would get herself here, knowing that her freedom was already achieved. She wonders if her mother had felt this free all those years ago, and has never understood her need to run until now. She manages to land an apartment with four other girls, all different, all different goals, and Miriam learns through Katie—she’s in fashion, and she’s got the most beautiful brown eyes Miriam’s ever seen, with lips that remind her of rose petals, and a figure that fills out her clothes just right—the way New York works, and when she gets a call from Elias-Clarke about an opening assistant position underneath Runway, a squeal slips out of her mouth.

Katie’s working at Vogue, as a copy-editor assistant, and she comes home nearly everyday with the clothes Miriam would see on the glossy pages of magazines she spent her childhood pouring over. She is so close to her dreams, she can nearly see them. (Katie’s right in front of her.)

She accepts the position, spending her days fetching coffee and faxes, watching the way Runway is controlled, the way her colleagues walk, talk, and dress. The magazines she poured her heart over now stand right in front of her, with future plans right in her reach. Her hands itch for sketchbooks, the designs of long, gorgeous dresses sprawling out in right before her eyes. Ambition and drive run through her veins, Miriam living and breathing on climbing the corporate ladder. She shoots up faster than anyone ever before, quickly changing her name to one of much more sophisticated tastes and times.

Not surprisingly, Katie is the one who suggests it.

“Honey, if you’re going to work in fashion, this whole ‘Miriam’ thing needs to go,” she says, organizing her closet as Miriam sits on the edge of her bed. “Fashion isn’t even what I want to do—”

“Yes, yes, we all know—it’s journalism,” Miriam fills in for her, slightly rolling her eyes. “Katie Leer, New York’s rising journalist,” she continues, sweeping her hand in the air, mimicking a large Broadway billboard.

Katie blushes, and Miriam thinks it’s so lovely on her dark skin that she wishes she could take a little dab of it, and place it onto the pages of Runway’s magazines. She wishes she could place all of Katie’s beauty, the skin, her eyes, her lips—

Katie’s staring at her strangely, her head tilted and mouth pursed. Miriam blinks.

“What’s wrong?”

Katie shakes her head.

She steps away from her closet, slowly kneeling down to Miriam on the bed. A strong, delicate hand finds its way under her chin, lifting it up to meet Katie’s eyes. The next thing Miriam knows is that her lips are on Katie’s, and oh, how soft they are! Katie’s hands are on her neck, pulling her closer, and the girl tastes like coffee, mouthwash, and no promises of tomorrow. Katie hums a little against her mouth, and Miriam nearly loses herself in it.

“Doesn’t Miranda sound nice?” Katie says, her voice quiet, breathy. Miriam looks at her. Katie gets up, and quickly heads out the door, leaving Miriam on the edge of her bed, hand on her lips.

“Miranda.”

She lets the name roll off her tongue.

(Katie moves out in two days, and Miriam lets herself forget.)

* * *

She meets Samuel when she is twenty, climbing the ladder at Runway, and he in law school. Their ambition is what brings them together, and—though she doesn’t know at the time—it is what drives them apart. Introducing herself as “Miranda Priestly”, the name slipping out of her mouth with ease now; she has long destroyed Miriam Princhek, and hasn’t thought about her mother in years. She wonders if her brother and sister had seen as much as their mother in her as she did.

Samuel is terribly charming, handsome, and intelligent. This is the dream, she reminds herself, as he pulls her into a rough kiss underneath dimly lit streets of late 1970s New York, feeling his not-quite-cleanly-shaven face meet hers. His hand feels wrong on her waist, his lips against hers, his life in hers. But she can’t resist his words of promises, futures, and lives together—this is what she wanted. This is what she would prove to all those in Detroit who never quite cared.

The career, the name, the husband.

So when Samuel proposes in a fancy restaurant almost a year of dating, the word “yes” falls a little too easy out of her mouth, and the ring feels a little too heavy. She’s happy, she reminds herself. This is what it is. Happiness.

Their wedding is a large, lavish affair, with photographers left and right—her career has taken quite off the rails, and Miranda Priestly is about to be the next big face of Runway. She stutters her vows, but Samuel doesn’t notice, and they begin the next chapter of their lives together.

The gold of her ring glints beautifully in the spring sun, married on the rooftop of the apartment they’re going to share. (She thought she forgot about Katie’s kiss, but when the priest says, “You may now kiss the bride”, Miranda can’t help but remember her soft skin, lips, and hands, and wondering if marrying a man she loved was supposed to feel so, so wrong.)

She tells herself that she’s in love. That this is what it is.

The dream.

(Throughout the first few days of their honeymoon, she finds herself looking through photos of her mother, a woman she can’t quite recognize anymore, and cries when she doesn’t.)

She wonders if her mother’s wedding night was the first time she had the urge to run.

* * *

Miranda meets Nigel Kipling at twenty-four, through small soirees where Miranda scrambled across the city to find a decent outfit. She picks out his ambition like a shark sniffs out blood, finding the gleam in her eyes the exact same in his. She’s happily married to Samuel, and already hopping her way up Runway’s corporate ladders, pining for executive position after executive position. She’s heard of his skill before, his eye for detail, and manages to sweep from Vogue’s sinking ships to Runway’s prosperous future.

They’re both young, him somewhere in his twenties; Miranda’s not quite sure. She takes him up her path, and as she reaches the top of the company, people have whispers of an affair, but Nigel is just about as gay as they can get, and Miranda’s happily in love with her husband.

He becomes her right hand man, with his designs and ideas pushing Runway to its success after plummeting numbers.

He is the first male friend that Miranda has not fucked, and she decides to keep it that way. She remembers Katie, and wonders if it’s a little like that, but she thinks of Katie’s soft lips and hands, and knows that it’s nothing quite like that. Nothing is quite like Katie.

Like most people in the industry, his name is not his real one, but if there’s one thing Miranda understands, is that mirrors are easy to hide behind, as long as you never step in front of one. He’s from Rhode Island, last of six siblings, and has homophobic parents.

Miranda’s never been so glad her parents are dead.

(Well, she’s not so sure about her mother, but she hasn’t looked, and doesn’t think she ever will.)

She doesn’t know that she’s made a friendship that’s going to last the rest of her life, but if Miranda did know, she would probably screw it up, so God made the right move with that one.

* * *

Miranda and Samuel last seven years.

It’s seven years into their marriage that she finds out that he had been fucking another woman on the side. Cheap perfume—how cliche, how like a movie—is found on his coat collar, a stench-like fruity, margarita scent. It seems his handsome face had not just charmed her, but four other women as well.

She watches as his stoic face frames itself upon him, barely flinching as Miranda hurls insult after insult on him, her words hard, sharp, and cold. (Looking back, she isn’t sure if this is where she won her title of “Ice Queen”, or years before.)

She had tried so hard, so much, convincing herself she was happy that she almost was, with her promises and fake words falling out of her mouth easier than fighting across boardrooms for budgets.

The years she had used to build her career, the youngest Runway editor of all time, the one to bring staggering numbers into ones higher than any fashion magazine ever, she had not realised the time, the days, she had neglected her marriage. She wonders if this is what her father had felt, but she has no children, nothing tethering her down save her job.

As the words leave her tongue, she learns not to regret them, and it is this, that Miranda learns to condition her voice to the soft one of the future. Her hands throw Samuel’s things out the window, screaming blistering insults at him, telling him to call a lawyer right away, saying that she’ll kill him in court.

With his things she also throws one of the two photographs she owns of her mother, a woman she no longer recognises but wished she did, after him, and learns that loud, burning, raging anger like this will end her.

She no longer raises her voice to above a slight whisper.

Collapsing on the sleek floors of her third apartment in New York, she holds the shattered frame of her mother against her chest, silent sobs racking her body.

Of all the things she threw out the window that day, including her marriage, the photograph is the one she regrets the most.

* * *

Miranda Priestly is thirty-two when she meets Jacqueline Follet. She’s no competition—Miranda has no reason to worry—the woman is too young, and her long, brown, straight as a ruler hair glints in the Paris sun. She is about as close as a female friend Miranda gets in this industry, with the woman working at Runway France.

When Miranda first met Jacqueline, her heart couldn’t help but burn with jealousy. Born French, the woman had no need to change her name—she walks with a sophistication that Miranda can only dream of, one that you learn from the beginning of your life, one you are born into, and one that Miranda has spent her all her years trying to perfect but can’t quite nail. The girl has a sense of fashion Miranda wishes she was brave enough to pull off, and a life she is not afraid to be proud of. Nevertheless, Miranda has done well for herself, raising Runway from its depths and creating jobs for people like Jacqueline Follet.

They meet when they can, which is not much, but Miranda finds that it’s enough.

Sitting outside a small, French cafe on the outskirts of Paris, Jacqueline’s soft perfume wafts by her, entrancing her along with Paris’s sweet country air. Miranda watches Jacqueline’s lips, the way her hair frames her delicate face, how her shirts falls just right over her body.

The woman tells some kind of joke that breezes by Miranda’s ears that she brings out her fake laugh for, watching as the woman’s eyes crinkle ever so slightly in the corners, her eyeliner along with it.

Jacqueline sudden stops speaking, and looks at Miranda strangely.

Miranda feels as though she’s been pushed fifteen years back into the past.

Jacqueline’s eyes narrow, her head tilts, and her hand rests on her chin.

“It seems like you’ve got a little secret,” she cooes, a small giggle coming out of the end of her words. Miranda sees red. Seethes.

One comment. That’s all it takes.

She doesn’t find Jacqueline Follet’s face as pretty as she did before.

* * *

 She’s thirty-five when she realises that coming home to an empty apartment is a lot more sobering than it was ten years ago. The silence that greets her is more deafening than calming, and for a while, she considers getting a dog.

She needs to get married, she knows, as in this industry, being a woman at this age with no husband gives off a certain—uneasiness—and she too, like people do, gets lonely at times. Meeting Henry through the grapevine of her work, he is in the medical industry, working as a family doctor. His eyes are unusually kind, his smile crooked, and ears slightly uneven. Not particularly good looking, nor charming—nearly the complete opposite of what Samuel was, Miranda realises she could settle down with this man. Be happy in a marriage like this.

So when the inevitable ring comes along, with its shiny gold band and round, beautiful pure diamond in its centre, Miranda says yes, and it’s almost as easy as breathing. (Almost.)

She tries so hard with Henry, making sure to come home at six each night, and keeping weekends off. Sometimes she misses a few days, and he does too, but this life, it’s  _easy._  It’s kind. Soft. Gentle.

Her mother’s photograph hangs in the hallway of their apartment, though Miranda is making plans for a slightly bigger place—they’ve talked about children already, and Miranda’s completely sure that Henry would be an amazing father. He is gentle with his words, actions, and heart, and as the photograph’s frame glints in the faint light, Miranda wonders if her mother would be happy she’s leading.

(Miranda tells herself she is happy, but she’s not quite sure. How are you supposed to know an emotion when you’ve never quite felt it?)

When she’s thirty-six, she’s sobbing on the marble, blood-stained floors of her washroom, the pain of her gut ripping through her, but the pains of her failures even more so. Henry wraps warm arms around her, both crying, as they mourn what would’ve been their first child. It’s been a while since her heart has hurt so, and Miranda does not miss it. She thinks of her mother, of her quiet, beautiful mother, and hopes that her tendency to run leaves.

She’s rushed to a hospital, Henry fast behind her, and together in their grief, Miranda whispers “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” over and over again into his ear. He doesn’t reply, completely focused on getting her to safety. Miranda Priestly often wonders what she had done in a previous life to deserve a man like Henry Taylor, but has learned that it doesn’t do well to question God so much.

She gets pregnant with the twins at thirty-seven, her and Henry trying for an entire year before their success. It only makes her feel even less adequate to be a mother than she was before, and hopes to the Lord that she’s able to do this job. Able to succeed.

When she finally gets to hold her beautiful darling girls after nine, long, gruesome months, she wonders if this is what happiness feels like. (If so, how come she never felt it with Henry?) As she holds Caroline and her husband Cassidy, she watches as the small girl yawns loudly, as the life she has brought into the world breathe.

For the first time, Miranda Priestly does not understand her mother’s tendency to leave. 

* * *

If she was surprised to see her first marriage fall apart, then she was shocked that her second marriage has lasted this long. She is forty-two, the girls four, and they hear the door nearly slam as their father runs out. She quietly explains to her young girls that Mommy and Daddy still love each other, but not like that, and when Cassidy’s small voice pipes up, saying “Will we see Daddy again?”, Miranda’s heart nearly rips out of her chest, dropping to her knees, pulling the two redheads into an embrace.

“Of course you will see Daddy again. Just at different times, and not always with Mommy,” she quietly explains, whispering into both of their ears. She hears Caroline sniffle, and squeezes them harder.

“Okay,” Cassidy says.

And they prance off to their rooms, as Miranda remains on the floors of a house she had worked so hard for, with a marriage she had looked so long for, and children she had begged so much for, silent sobs racking her body. Her mother’s photograph is still in the hallways of her home—even though she had moved—and for the first time in a long time, Miranda Priestly has not missed her Mom.

She wonders where is now, and how she’s doing, or if she’s even alive. (The last option is the most likely, but even Miranda, the most cynical of people, doesn’t like to think about that.)

Eleanor Princhek had left because her husband had ignored her, left her for other women, and Miranda thinks about her failed marriages, and wonders if she’s become the type of person her mother would leave. She doesn’t like that thought.

When Henry asks for a divorce, he comes quietly, and owns up to it. Unlike Samuel, he confesses that he has fallen in love with another woman, one who will love him as much as he deserves, and as Miranda watches the tears slip down his cheeks, she pulls him in for a long hug, not realising her heart is breaking too.

She sends him off with her well-wishes, her hopes that he is able to find a happiness he wasn’t with her, and just begs for him to keep a happy relationship with their daughters. She doesn’t need to, she knows, because Henry is a bunch better parent than she, and she has yet to bounce one of her girls on her knee and teach her how to spread lipstick smoothly, apply blush right on the apple of their cheeks, and eyeliner across their lids.

They keep it out of court, but Miranda knows that she would fight like hell to keep her girls. Henry seems to understand that they’re the only thing left in her life, and with sad eyes, asks for weekend visits. Miranda agrees, and sends him on his way.

She told herself she didn’t love him as much as he deserved.

It doesn’t mean she can’t hear her heart beginning to shatter.

* * *

At forty-six, when the girls are eight, she meets Stephen Tomlinson. With two divorces and a teenage boy from the first one trailing behind him, Miranda sees too much of herself in him to even consider the presumptuous invitation left by her first assistant on her desk: elegant, old-fashioned, and beautiful. The looping script beckons her to a fancy restaurant on Fifth Avenue, screaming wealth, power, and seduction. Miranda’s seen moves similar to this before; after all, she is the Editor-in-Chief of Runway, with about the most power someone has in the fashion industry. It’s been four years since her last marriage has fallen apart, and she had been too busy with raising two young, beautiful girls to think about dating again.

Her fingers run over the delicate calligraphy, knowing that if she strikes a friendship—in the very least—with Stephen Tomlinson, she would be able to extend much of her hand outside of fashion.

She accepts, and in quiet, whispery voices, tells her second assistant to respond to the invite, via email. (She knows a power play when she sees one.)

Miranda wonders if she’s going to regret this, but finds that she’s too tired to care.

* * *

When the ring comes, one just as flashy and beautiful as Samuel’s, the word “yes” is not as easy as it was all those years ago.

Stephen is the first heterosexual man she has met that has the charms and wits of Samuel, but the kindness of Henry. She sees an ambition that rode in her eyes before Runway, before New York; that yearning for more. Charming words slide off his tongue, moves that Miranda has all seen before, but this time, there’s something a little different. A little brighter. She immediately notices that he does not want her for her money, power, or status.

(But what does he want her for, then?)

Their first kiss is in the hallway of Stephen’s fancy apartment on Sixth Avenue, his rough hands on her waist and her soft ones around his neck. It’s just a kiss, as Miranda has places to go, and he too.

But when he lets go, she nearly bolts out the door, barely grabbing her handbag in her haste, her heels clacking loudly on the sidewalk, as she realises that she had forgotten to call Roy. Clutching her bag, she stands in the middle of the street, with the streetlights just beginning to flicker on, and she impulsively heads towards the nearest subway station. It’s been a few years since Miranda has even stepped foot into the subway, and she believes the last time she did so was when her name was still Miriam Princhek.

Quickly buying a MetroCard, she scans the map and hopes she doesn’t get lost. Pushing her sunglasses down and tying a scarf over her head, she hopes that no one notices as she walks in the throngs of New Yorkers stepping to their own lives, each as unique and vivid as the next.

Her bag remains clutched in her hand, as she sits on the surprisingly-somewhat-empty subway car, and wonders why did Stephen feel so wrong when he should’ve felt so right. She remembers Katie Leer with her loud words and ambitions, the wanting to climb that Miranda shared so much of.

Reaching her stop, Miranda steps off the car, walking directly to the exit, until she hears her name behind her.

“Miranda Priestly?”

She stops, but doesn’t turn.

“Mummy, is that Miranda Priestly?” the young voice pipes up again. Miranda pauses, once again.

She keeps on walking, her feet nearly running her home.

* * *

Her third wedding is a small affair, as though each time each marriage came along, her hope for each one diminished. Her vows are quiet and short, the same with Stephen’s, as though they’re both walking into this knowing it will fail. (Miranda’s almost sure of it.)

It is beautiful, like her other two weddings, but the long, enduring silences from her girls when she came home and gently broke to them that “Yes, Mommy is in love with someone who isn’t Daddy”, and “Yes, he will be coming to live with us”. They’re young, she knows, and she has worked so hard to give them a childhood better than hers. Isn’t that it all came down to? Not the fame, success, or ambition? Wasn’t it what everyone else had said, what you’re really working for in the end?

Miranda’s not so sure.

(She knows she’s not the best of mothers, but it isn’t to say that she doesn’t try, and she does, so, so much. She doubts her daughters look up to her the way she did her mother, but she hasn’t ever had the feeling to just up right leave either. Suppose it balances out.)

Her wedding night goes quietly, softly, Stephen’s hands a little too tentative, and not quite sure where to touch. She doesn’t come, but her husband—how foreign the word feels, falling out her lips—does, and when he asks, she lies. (It’s much easier than the “I do’s” in her vows.)

Staring at the ceiling nearly an hour after Stephen’s snores have begun, she traces with her eyes the patterns in the ceilings, and has the impulsive urge to call Katie, until she remembers Katie Leer died nearly twenty-five years ago chasing dreams of real journalism in a country that was still known as Rhodesia at the time.

* * *

At fifty-one, there’s very little that shocks her. Andrea Sachs does not shock her, but she wouldn’t be surprised if she did. The girl walks into her office with a confidence that Miranda has not seen in years, though it’s a confidence that carries timidity splattering behind its walls. There’s a gleam in the girl’s eyes that Miranda sees in the mirror, though it was nearly thirty years ago since she’s seen one that bright.

The girl has clearly never known how to dress, but her hands reach out and place her resume boldly on her desk—the girl’s hands are shaking, Miranda notices—the words printed out in small, neat letters spelling out  _Bachelor's Degree from Stanford University, Editor-in-Chief of the Stanford Daily, and Winner of the National Journalism Writing Competition_  float out before her. She’s suddenly thrown back nearly thirty-five years, into a shabby apartment on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, sitting shyly on the bed of her roommate, with her trying to convince her to change her name.

Nigel comes sweeping in with his loud words and bold proclamations, and she’s never been quite glad to have his interpretation. She sees the girl quietly leave out of the corner of her eye, and after Nigel exits, she beckons Emily to call the girl back.

She tells herself that she’s not quite sure why, but Miranda is perhaps the best liar of all time, and the best to herself.

The photograph of her mother no longer hangs in the hallway of her townhouse, but now it’s tucked away in the corner of her bedroom.

* * *

Andrea Sachs has time and time again proved Miranda wrong, and if it’s one thing Miranda dislikes the most—other than the pounding failures of her marriages and crushing defeat of her mother—is being wrong. But as Andrea drops the impossibly obtained Harry Potter book into her desk with a what must’ve been extremely satisfying drop—the steaming cup of coffee right alongside it, Miranda isn’t quite sure to be mad or impressed.

Out of all her marriages, Stephen was the one she had wanted to last the most. In her first, she had wished for someone to hold her hand as they conquered the city of New York, running with the naivety of their youth and burning passions; in her second, she had hoped for a man to settle down with, to raise children with, as they both pursued the remains of their dreams; in her third, Miranda had simply wished for someone to come home to and perhaps, just perhaps, grow old with.

As Stephen slams a chair onto the ground, barely missing the portraits hanging on the walls, she remembers why she no longer keeps the photograph of her mother—a woman she no longer recognizes but wished so badly that she had—on the carefully painted confines of her home, but on the small nightstand of the bedroom representing her falling marriage.

Her soft voice stumbles and catches, though she doubts the man notices, and listens to his screams as they dwindle down to quiet begs.

“I’m sorry,” he whispers, beginning to pick up the pieces of the chair. Miranda nods numbly, standing silently.

“Leave it. The housekeeper will clean it up in the morning,” she says, forcing an edge into her voice. Stephen looks at her sadly, and slowly gets up.

“I’ll book a hotel room,” he replies, ripping his gaze from hers.

“No,” she forces out.

(The next word requires even more force.)

“Stay.”

He nods, and walks silently to the end of the hall, Miranda listening as his footsteps pad gently to the last guest room. She feels her marriage slip out of her hands, and this time, unlike the two others, she is not surprised.

It doesn’t hurt any less.

* * *

September is a busy month. Miranda rarely has time to hear herself think, nevermind her husband’s nagging voice constantly, constantly droning in the background. But then why, why does Andrea Sachs crop up so much? (The rational part of her knows it is because Andrea Sachs is her somewhat-slowly-becoming competent second assistant, but the irrational part of her sees it as something a little more.)

She had used to split her time into the magazine, her daughters, and her marriage. Now it’s split more between the magazine and her daughters. Stephen makes a purchase of an apartment that he thinks she doesn’t know about, and ignores his late nights—it’s very likely that he’s merely a hard worker, for he had, after all, been kind and hardworking and gentle from the beginning, but if it’s one thing Miranda knows, is that people change faster than the wind, and there’s not quite much you can do about it.

Paris comes faster than she expects, and is nearly swept off her feet. Busy with defending her position, busy with defending her daughters, busy defending her marriage, Andrea Sachs slowly becomes a brighter constant throughout the chaos that has blurred between her professional and personal life.

The girl has shown promise, much more than Emily anyway, and even Miranda is surprised with herself when she takes the girl to Paris. Careful hands selecting priceless amounts of couture, Miranda thinks of the way a skirt would drape over Andrea, the way a shirt would fit, and tries very, very hard to tell herself that Andrea’s lips can’t be anywhere as soft as Katie’s, and she’s never quite had feelings like _that._

It’s almost a relief when the divorce papers come, but as the reality sinks in—and Miranda had never been one to avoid reality—she thinks of her mother; the hanging photograph on the hallowed walls of her home, once standing proudly in gleaming hallways, but now tucked away into quiet corners.

She tries to remember her mother’s face, and crumbles inside when she cannot.

Her girls. Her beautiful, darling girls.

Failure has been a constant in her personal life, in her marriage, in her pregnancies, in her relationships. Motherhood hadn’t come easily, and some days, she wonders if she’s cheating her daughters of a happy childhood. She wonders if she has failed to give them what she had so desperately wanted for herself.

The papers sit glaringly on the coffee table, the bright white nearly piercing her eyes. Standing up, she stiffly pours herself a finger of scotch, wincing slightly as the strong taste burned her throat. Wandering off onto the large balcony of the penthouse, she leans against the railing, watching as the lights of the City of Love danced around her.

(Irony, she found, was the most disappointing of all.)

Downing the rest of the glass, she nearly misses the quiet opening of her room door, and heels muffled by soft carpets behind her. _Andrea._

She stays at the balcony.

“Miranda?”

The heels click on marble floors, and Miranda can already see the concerned look on the girl’s face. Leave, she wants to say. Leave while you can, she wishes she could shout.

She doesn’t.

Andrea’s hands slowly take the glass from her hands, holding it carefully in her hand. Her soft skin meets Miranda’s, guiding her gently into the room.  _Am I really that drunk?_ She asks herself, but she’s too entranced by Andrea’s touch on hers to care.

Bold, bold Andrea.

Miranda sits down as gracefully as she can onto the sofa, Andrea kneeling before her, hands delicately rubbing circles onto Miranda’s.

“Is there anything I can do?”

Sometimes Miranda forgets just how smart her second assistant is, but today is not one of those times.

Yes, she wants to whisper. Yes.

She doesn’t.

“Your job.”

Curt. Quick. Miranda Priestly.

She watches as Andrea’s face crumbles before her, as the girl quietly gets up, placing her files onto the coffee table, right beside the divorce papers. (She was bound to have noticed.)

After the door shuts behind her, Miranda pours herself another drink, and nearly collapses on her thousand dollar silk sheets, unable to keep her heart from cracking.

* * *

Andrea Sachs has surprised Miranda Priestly time and time again, but this, out of them all, has to be the biggest.

Stepping out of the car, she barely hears Andrea’s car door slam behind her, and the click of heels in the opposite direction. She’s immediately swarmed with cameras and journalists, with journalists shoving cameras in her face, and her hand distinctly reach for Andrea. Reach for her the way she should’ve the night before.

Her hand grabs air.

Head whipping around, panic bursts in her chest, and she forces to keep the girl’s name in her throat.

A slim figure in a A-lined black dress is walking through the throngs of the traffic jam, and as Miranda slams the speed dial on her phone, her eyes follow the barely visible toss of a cellphone into the fanciest fountain in Paris.

Well.

She supposes it was better than a sack of coins.

* * *

She entered Paris with a husband and a second assistant, and she left with neither, with the glaring exception all emotional rationality.

Breaking the news to her daughters, with quiet, gentle words of “Stephen and I weren’t happy” and “Mommy deserves even the tiniest bit of happiness, doesn’t she?”, Miranda braces herself for screaming words and hissy fits that don’t come. Cassidy nods silently, heading directly for her room, and Caroline wraps Miranda in a hug, with Miranda falling to her knees.

“You deserve all the happiness, Mom,” she says into her ear, and Miranda swallows, wishing ever so much that her daughter’s words were true.

“Thank you darling. Why don’t you go and do your homework now?” she prompts, forcing the tears that are about to fall to stay.

Of all the things Miranda’s worked so hard for, it is her daughters that she cherishes the most, and quite selfishly, hopes they’ll never leave her too.

* * *

Bold, bold Andrea has the nerve, the courage, to send in a request for a recommendation, and Miranda is relieved that she had been the one to receive the fax, instead of Emily. (Emily, who by the way, doesn’t quite live up to her former second assistant, but Miranda supposes she will do.)

If the girl was half as smart as she was at Runway, she would’ve said she had been backpacking in Europe for the better part of the year, but no. Andrea Sachs was nothing but upfront and honest with her possible employer.

Miranda has half the mind to end her career with the swift motion of a few strokes.

She also has half the mind not to.

She also finds that when it comes to Andrea Sachs, rationality is not the first thing that comes to her.

Scribbling down  _Of all my assistants, Andrea Sachs was my biggest disappointment,_ she lets the ink write itself. She could just leave it there. Her hand stops her.  _If you don’t hire her, you’re an idiot._

Filing the fax, she promises to keep Andrea Sachs far from her mind, telling herself that that small stint in her life was just that—a stint.

(She’s not particularly successful.)

* * *

The second time she’s been kissed by a woman is when she’s fifty-two, and as Andrea Sachs slowly pulls her in by the chin, placing her incredibly soft lips onto Miranda’s, she realises this is what it had all be leading to. Whatever “it” is.

Her heart beats traitorously in her chest, and her arms wrap around Andrea’s waist, kissing her harder. The girl tastes of a bit of alcohol, champagne, Miranda’s pretty sure, and the silk of her dress almost feels as good as the softness of her skin. Wondering why she hadn’t kissed the girl in Paris, she realises that the shape of Andrea’s body fits perfectly against hers, as they fall into bed much too quickly, Miranda reaching a climax she had never climbed before.

If this was the “it” in her life, all the years of scaling the ladder, Miranda’s never been more sure of something in her life. She whispers her apologies as she carefully, slowly, fucks Andrea the way she likes it, and nearly comes at watching Andrea.

Miranda Priestly has come to realise that she’s never quite been in love before, and if this is the first time, she hopes it is not her last.

* * *

Andrea, a previous constant in her life, has accompanied her once more as a constant. The journalist's seemingly-careless words are flung past Miranda’s ears, and as she watches Andrea chase dreams she had worked so hard for, chase a future Miranda had wanted so much when she was younger, a swell of pride worms her way into Miranda’s chest.

The sun dangles softly into the bedroom, Andrea yawning as she gets up. Miranda rubs her eyes tiredly, and props herself up with an elbow.

“Who’s this?”

Miranda freezes. She had forgotten her mother’s photography had sat on her nightstand.

“My mother.”

Andrea nods.

“She’s beautiful.”

“She was,” Miranda whispering in agreement. Andrea pauses at the sudden switch of tense.

“Was?”

“I’ve got a busy morning to attend to, dear,” Miranda says, slipping out of bed. Andrea places the photography back onto the stand, still staring at it. Her face is calm, and Miranda knows that she’ll weasel it out of her later.

But not now.

Andrea has become fluent in Miranda’s strange language of wants, and Miranda feels a warmth in her chest that she had never had before.

* * *

“What was her name?” Andrea asks, as Miranda cooks carefully at the stove. Miranda frowns, wiping her hands on her apron.

“Whose name?”

“Your mother’s.”

Miranda pauses.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t wish to,” Andrea gently says, looking at Miranda deeply.

“No, no,” Miranda says. “My past doesn’t need to be dug up. Her name was Eleanor Princhek. She left when I was four.”

Andy slips her arms around Miranda’s waist, hugging her.

And so, they stand there, one folded within another, underneath a roof with two darling girls above, and their future stretching before them, as bright as a summer’s day.

* * *

“Miranda?” Andy asks. Her voice seems to shake.

“Yes?” She looks up from the Book.

“What was your mother’s maiden name?”

Miranda frowns at the question.

“Sawyer. Eleanor Sawyer.”

Andy visibly swallows.

“What’s wrong?” Miranda asks, her voice getting caught up in her throat. “What happened?”

“I think I found your mother.”

* * *

Andrea had indeed found her mother, but it was Eleanor Princhek’s grave that she had, metaphorically of course, dug up. Miranda was not surprised, not in the least. After all, her mother would’ve been in her seventies, at the very least. So no, Miranda Priestly was not surprised.

A string of apologies had sprouted from Andrea’s lips, saying she had no right, but was just curious, with Miranda silencing her with a kiss. Looking her lover with a smirk on her face, she watches as Andrea blushes a wonderful shade of pink, one that she had wished to capture on the pages of her magazine but never could quite get.

But when they fly out to Colorado, Andrea gripping onto Miranda’s hand for nearly the entire flight, finding their way to the cemetery, Miranda is surprised at what they find.

“Do you want to split up?” Andrea asks, voice strong.

“That would be for the best,” Miranda replies.

“But do  _you_  want to?” Andrea asks again. Miranda shakes her head. “We’ll look together.”

They walk down row after row, and though Miranda’s never been religious, she can’t help but hope that the spirits of the bodies don’t come back to haunt her. It takes them nearly two hours to locate her mother’s grave, their footsteps left in the snow, a small thing tucked away on the side of the frozen river, right underneath an ice-covered willow tree.

The flowers Miranda holds in her hands shake.

Brushing away the snow at the bottom, Miranda grips Andrea’s hand even harder than before.

_Eleanor Sawyer. 1933 - 1970._

There are no words after. No “loving wife”, “loving mother”. Miranda wonders who buried her mother, but she can’t quite find it in herself to want to know. She doesn’t want to know about the life her mother left her for.

Her mother had died at thirty-seven.

During the year of her mother’s death, Miranda had not even left Detroit to chase her wild dreams in New York. Eleven years after her mother had left, she had died in the middle of nowhere, with a fifteen year old Miriam left to claw at her life on her own. At thirty-seven herself, Miranda had been pregnant with her girls. She falls to her knees, shaking, as she places the flowers at the grave. There is no one else around them, and the cemetery shuns an eeriness only a place filled with the dead can.

No tears fall.

A guilt trips up inside her, wondering if she should’ve cried for a woman she barely remembered, a woman she only knew in name and the way she would bounce Miriam on her lap in front of the mirror.

Andrea gives her her time, stepping back slightly, allowing Miranda to grieve.

Or grieve as much as she can.

Once Miranda gets up, Andrea loops her around through Miranda’s.

“Ready to go?”

She nods.

They step out of the graveyard, leaving behind Miranda’s mother, as Miranda’s mother did to her all those years ago, but this time, Miranda leaves with the knowledge that the wound in her heart created by her mother will never really ever close, but as she pulls Andrea in for a kiss, she knows it is enough.

It’s more than enough.

**FIN.**

> _“Cold, cold, cold, intoberly cold and sweet.” —_ Louis Untermeyer, _from “Toward the Piraeus”.  _

**Author's Note:**

> Writing something that's not a Soulmate AU? Wow! I hope to get another story up soon before Nanowrimo, and hope you enjoyed.


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